Reflections on a Year of Travel: Our Answers to Your Questions

As we reach the end of our nearly year of travel, we are feeling reflective. For help thinking through the many facets of our trip, we asked our Instagram friends to send us questions to ponder. So millennial of us, we know. Below are your questions and our answers. Also, photos. Because where else are all these selfies supposed to go???

What was your favorite place?

We’ve been reflecting on this question all year long, moving cities and countries around in our minds on an imaginary list. We wrote a quick post about our favorite Top 5 Places that we visited this year. Number one was Japan.

What was the best food you had all year?

Japan for the delicious ramen and sushi. Mexico for all the tacos, fresh juices, mezcal and great mix of street food and fancy dining that was affordable. Vietnam for the pho, the bahn mi, and the vibrant street food scene washed down with one of the many local lagers. Malaysia for its eclectic fusion of Indian, Malay, and Chinese. We tried so many new dishes in Georgetown and hardly made a dent in sampling the wide variety of cuisine there.

Where was the best weather?

Mexico. We love sunshine and heat but don’t always love the humidity that accompanies the heat, making Mexico the winner. Asia had a lot of sun, a lot of rain, and a lot of dampness. South America had quite a bit of rain too.

Did you only live out of your one bag?

Yes, but we swapped items throughout the year. Essentially we had 3 different sets of clothes, that varied in small ways from one another. We wrote about our packing lists for each leg: Africa Leg, Asia Leg, Central/South America Leg

How did you wash your clothes?

We paid for a service when it was available and we had a lot of dirty items. Otherwise we washed items by hand with Dr. Bronner’s Peppermint soap in sinks of hostels and hotel rooms. In Africa and Asia we did more by hand because our clothes dried more quickly in the heat. In Central/South America we washed (always cold water) and dried (always cold temp) more often using laundry services because we often couldn’t guarantee they’d dry fast enough before we moved on, and there’s nothing worse than wet clothes in a backpack.

What item did you use most?

Besides our iPhones (for maps, podcasts, writing, chatting with family/friends, meditation, etc)…
Olivia- scarf
Jason- quick-dry Ex-Officio underwear

Do you have a map of all the places you’ve visited in order?

A virtual one, yes! This post has a list of the places we visited by month, with links to some of our travel writing from those stops. Below there are two maps. The first is called The Route and is a list of the places we actually visited, in order. Open the left sidebar on the map to see the cities listed and divided by the three legs of our trip. The second map is called The Plan and is a list of the countries we intended to visit (most of which we did).

What are you most excited to come back to?

Olivia- Different clothes to wear, local yoga studio, spending time in person with our family and friends, more routine in life
Jason- Fast reliable internet, cooking, music from my stereo system, drinking a glass of wine on our porch

What are you saddest to leave behind?

Olivia- not having a house to clean or dishes to do, sleeping, carefree lifestyle, freedom
Jason- the freedom that everyday was mine, the time to read a lot of books, the opportunity to meet people from around the world everyday

How has this perspective changed you or your perspectives on life?

Olivia- The world and what I can do with my life feel more open and fluid than when we left.
Jason- I’ve been answering that question in my head for the last few months and tried to write about it some here.

What could you not live without?

Our coffee setup, which we wrote about here.

How many cases of gastroenteritis have you endured?

Olivia- 0
Jason- 1. I was so excited that I might be able to take a braggadocious photo of my unused loperamide until 3 weeks ago, then I spent 24 hours in our Bogotá hotel using several doses.

Where did you feel most welcomed?

The hospitality in Japan is legendary and having friends there who took us out to a fresh fish breakfast and Suomo food for dinner was special.

As strangers, the people of Colombia and Guatemala were incredible. We were consistently greeted with big beautiful smiles, offered spontaneous help, and personally escorted through markets and transit systems when we looked even slightly lost (which is a lot).

Where did you have the most difficulty making travel arrangements?

We found it really easy to plan in advance, which we did a lot. We learned it is also easy to shop up and plan on the spot in most places too. But in the age of Airbnb, Booking.com, and online reservation sites, travel arrangements were quite easy.

What was the scariest moment?

Our plane flight from Istanbul to Casablanca that lost an engine and had to emergency land (there’s a video on our insta feed if that interests you). That’s about all we’d like to remember of this harrowing and still painful experience.

We were also scammed in Cape Town in our first month traveling. While this was unpleasant, at no point were we in physical danger, so it hasn’t had quite the lasting effect as the plane experience has.

What was the scariest hike?

Olivia- I was most scared of my knees giving out on the W hike, although luckily they mostly made it through.
Jason- Lion’s Head in Cape Town. While not objectively scary, a simple half day hike from the city, it activated my fear of heights in a way I hadn’t experienced since childhood. With trembling legs and wavering confidence, I made it up and then down, ecstatic. The rest of the year’s many hikes were far less scary, thank goodness.

Where and when was the moment you were most amazed by God’s creation (were there any places that made you cry)?

The Sahara Desert, the W hike in Patagonia, and the caves of Phong Nha were all amazing. We wrote more about our 16 favorite experiences from our 10 months traveling, which all made the list because they wowed us so much.

Did you have any spiritual experiences?

It’s cliche, and not in the mountain-top kind of way, but the daily interactions we came to expect with shop sellers, taxi drivers, and restaurant servers became a kind of ritual in connecting with humanity. Some of these people are as different as possible from us: nationality, skin color, language, opportunity, wealth, education, and yet we connected with big smiles, over funny misunderstandings, by learning each other’s names, and by wishing each other truly well. It became one of my favorite parts about the daily travel experience. Because a joke, an honest reflection, or a curious question can bring us together as brothers and sisters who share so much more than we realize.

Is there anything you’ve adjusted to life traveling that you’re hoping to apply to life once home?

Yep. We’ve been keeping a list of ways we want to be in the world when we go home, something we’ve been calling ‘Slow Living’. They are all inspired directly by our travels, books we’ve read, or by ways we’ve changed while on the road.

How did you push through the times when it seemed maybe you’d run out of things to talk about?

We moved in and out of periods where we tried to connect with other travelers, inviting their conversation into our partnership. This helps spice things up a bit.

We also learned to talk less, which is a necessity when spending 99% of our time together for a whole year. We sometimes sat in silence, sometimes ate in silence, and sometimes walked in silence.

And lastly, we learned to create specific time spaces to listen to each other’s conversational interests that we probably won’t need to listen to after we move home. Olivia’s rule was Jason can’t talk about racism before 8am, but after that is ok. And Jason let Olivia know when he was ready (and when he wasn’t) to dream about how the furniture will be arranged in our house in Portland when we move back in.

What was your most awkward embarrassing moment?

Olivia: When we lived in Guatemala for a month, there were ten people who lived in the home. One day when I was showering the latch didn’t secure as well as I had expected and poor Albert opened the door as I was stepping out of the shower. I wasn’t so embarrassed but I felt terrible for Albert, who could hardly look at me for a few days.

How did you fund your travels?

We saved up our monthly income for several years before leaving, Jason picked up extra urgent care and emergency room shifts during residency, and we hoarded miles and points which we’ve been redeeming all year (you can check out our miles and points tracker here for a final tally). We also saved money to pay our student loans.

Is there a practice you hope to take with you from your travels?

Olivia- I didn’t acquire any new habits as I hoped I might, but I discovered that the rhythms of life that I enjoy are all found at home.
Jason- yoga and meditation, making time to read books, enjoying hiking, repairing things instead of buying a new replacement all the time.

What was something new you learned about each other that surprised you?

Olivia- I learned that Jason has an insatiable appetite to discuss politics, and that I do not.
Jason- I learned Olivia is more of a sensualist than I knew, meaning she loves enjoyable experiences, at pretty much any cost.

What did you come to appreciate most about each other?

Olivia- In a whole new way, we learned how to move together and how to take care of each other. We stretched our ability to listen to one another on topics that are not our favorite. How to gently share when we aren’t interested. How to fill each others needs in new ways and how to recognize when we can’t and it is time to phone a friend or take a walk on our own. How to be on the same team. How to recognize each other’s irritation as a reflection of how that person is feeling and to not take it too personal.
Jason- I came to appreciate Olivia’s planning self. All year long I benefited from Olivia’s skills and passion for scheming and planning. From drafting multiple possible routes to maximize the sun at every stop of our journey, to inviting friends to join us along the way and coordinating schedules and timetables, to researching the number of days we should probably spend in each city and town, our trip was doable and enjoyable (with far less stress) because she loves to plan and is really good at it.